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John D. Rockefeller's family office, Rockefeller & Co., was founded in 1882. It began selling its expertise to other families in 1980, and by mid-2008 it had $28 billion of clients' assets under its hood. Then came a tragic event that could have brought the firm to its knees. In September 2009, as the financial crisis raged, Rockefeller's chief executive, James S. McDonald, shot himself behind a car dealership in Dartmouth, Mass.

While world markets continued their downward spiral, it took a year for the Rockefeller Family Trust, which owns 100% of the multifamily office's voting rights, to get McDonald's successor in place.

It's hard to imagine a more dangerous situation for a financial-services firm to be in. Destabilized from within and without, most wealth managers in such circumstances would have been unable to contain the stampede of clients heading out the door. And yet, Rockefeller's assets under advisement and administration actually rose 52%, to $35 billion, in the three years through this past June. Client retention since the 2008 recession has been 97%, 1% higher than in the entire past decade.

"Despite the turbulence of the period when I stepped in, it was a remarkably strong franchise and business," says Reuben Jeffery III, Rockefeller's CEO for the past two years. "It was a real testament to what had been created by generations long before me, including most of the people who are still here today."

Penta's rare peak inside Rockefeller reveals that, for all the outward signs of serenity, the firm is hardly on autopilot. Jeffery, looking every bit the Wall Street incarnation of Cary Grant, is a former Goldman Sachs partner who in 2007 went to work as George Bush's undersecretary of state for economic, energy, and agricultural affairs, after first serving as the president's post-9/11 special advisor for Lower Manhattan development.

In June 2008, Société Générale Private Banking closed on its purchase of a 37% economic share in Rockefeller & Co. Needing to strengthen its balance sheet during the recent euro crisis, the French bank has been under pressure to shed noncore assets. Therein lay an opportunity. This summer Jeffery quietly midwifed the sale of Société Générale's stake to Lord Jacob Rothschild's RIT Capital Partners. That closed-end fund is the investment vehicle for the London branch of the Rothschild family, and has 1.9 billion pounds ($3 billion) under management. The deal is expected to close at the end of this month. It's a union that should provide some valuable marketing opportunities. In these unsettled times, it's easy to imagine rattled new wealth wanting to tap the joint expertise of these experienced families that have managed to keep their heads down and their assets intact over several generations and right through the upheavals of history.

Any new clients will be dealing with Rockefeller Financial Services, the trade name of Rockefeller & Co. Some $7 billion of Rockefeller Financial's $35 billion pile are "assets under management"; the rest are assets under advisement or administration. Rockefeller provides its 298 clients either financial, trust, and tax advice, and the like, or service through its portfolio-tracking product for wealthy families, Rockit Solutions.

Rockefeller offers financial products from other firms but still believes in running its own funds in 10 core areas, such as global equities and fixed income. David Harris, Rockefeller's chief investment officer, says large multinationals with their triple-A ratings and mountains of cash need to be viewed as "the new sovereigns" during a period when government finances are deteriorating. The firm claims that its global funds are stars, but it keeps a lid on details. Prodded by Penta, Rockefeller reluctantly produced a "confidential" performance sheet on its 10 core funds but barred us from publishing the results. We can confirm that out of 10 offerings, seven global-equity and small-cap funds have consistently outperformed indexes over long periods of time.

One area of Rockefeller & Co. know-how has been built out of the Rockefeller family's 50-year record of integrating environmental, social, and governance concerns into its portfolio and investment decisions. Last fall, for example, Rockefeller hooked up with the Ocean Foundation, a nonprofit focused on marine conservation, to find "profitable investment opportunities that restore and support the health and sustainability of the world's oceans."

Through such distinctive offerings, Jeffery hopes to reel in new money, both family and institutional. "We're talking to sovereign entities," he says. "They have pools of capital that need to be deployed, and they need to find competent, trustworthy managers in [relevant] areas of investment activity."

Fees for managed assets invested in house funds typically run from 1% (for up to $25 million in assets) to 0.5% (over $50 million). Rockefeller targets families with $30 million; new clients are generally subject to a minimum $100,000 annual fee. Pure investment advice on a $50 million to $100 million portfolio typically costs 40 to 60 basis points, says the firm's president, Austin V. Shapard. Rockefeller has priced its services, he says, for "a fair profit margin, not a crazy one."

Portfolio-tracking service Rockit deftly handles exotics like intrafamily loans and the fluctuating price of ranch cattle. Its 23 clients typically pay 3 to 7 basis points on the $13 billion that runs through the Rockit platform. This, too, is a hidden asset that Jeffery is leveraging into a boutique powerhouse.